Update: This story was updated at 2:55 p.m. PDT to add comments from AT&T.
California's governor and attorney general are asking Internet service providers to help stop the dissemination of child pornography.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued a press release Friday asking Internet service providers in California to follow the lead of Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint in "removing child pornography from existing servers and blocking channels" that disseminate the illegal material.
"Protecting the safety of our children must be a top priority, not just for government, but also for businesses with the direct power to reduce the ability to conduct illegal activity," they said in a joint letter to the California Internet Service Provider Association.
Earlier this month, Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint announced an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to purge their servers of existing child pornography and eliminate access to user groups that distribute child pornography.
Schwarzenegger and Brown said in their letter that it's important that ISPs in California take action that is similar to the steps Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint have agreed to in New York. The Internet Service Provider Association is the largest association of Internet service providers in the country, representing more than 100 ISPs. These providers include small ISPs, as well as big ones such as AT&T and AOL.
"It is not enough for only a few Internet service providers to join the fight against online predators," the letter said. "Child pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, and distributing this material is illegal."
While no one disagrees that distributing child pornography is illegal, some civil liberty experts worry that the way in which ISPs will block access to it could limit free speech for people discussing and distributing perfectly legal content.
Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint have said they have no plans to actually block access to any Web sites. Instead, they plan to purge or erase any child pornography that has been cached in their servers. They also plan to limit or block access to some of their own Usenet or news groups, which can be used to disseminate this material.
For example, Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas."
My colleague Declan McCullagh points out in a story he wrote following the New York announcement that this tactic will most likely silence thousands of legitimate user groups that use the alt.* hierarchy for Usenet discussions.
It's not surprising that the American Civil Liberties Union is opposed to this action. Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, told CNET News.com in McCullagh's earlier article that service providers shouldn't be blocking wholesale sections of the Internet, including Usenet groups, because it could eliminate legitimate discussions. "That's taking a sledgehammer to an ant," he was quoted as saying.
Indeed, this could turn out to be a big issue as California's politicians try to push for similar action among other Internet service providers. Some large providers such as AOL stopped carrying Usenet, but AT&T still does.
AT&T said that it is already working to fight online child pornography. "AT&T has long-standing and established procedures for the removal of illegal child pornography from our servers, including servers that host newsgroups," said Marty Richter, a representative for AT&T. "Consistent with these procedures and federal and state statutes, when we receive a report of any illegal content being hosted on our servers and we have a good faith basis for concluding that the content is illegal, we will remove it."
[Update 6/10/2008 1 p.m.: We've found out details about what's going to happen. Time Warner Cable will pull the plug on tens of thousands of Usenet discussion groups after the N.Y. attorney general's office found child porn on 88 of them. Verizon and Sprint plan to limit Usenet, too. Earlier reports that the three broadband providers would block access to, say, overseas Web sites may not have been accurate. --Declan McCullagh]
Internet service providers Verizon Communications, Sprint Nextel, and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block Internet newsgroups and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography, The New York Times reported Monday.
The move--part of an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo expected to be announced Tuesday--will affect customers across the country, the newspaper reported. Negotiations are reportedly continuing with other ISPs.
Part of the plan is to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups known to traffic such images, as well as Web sites that host child pornography.
"The ISPs' point had been, 'We're not responsible, these are individuals communicating with individuals, we're not responsible,'" the newspaper reported Cuomo as saying. "Our point was that at some point, you do bear responsibility."
The agreement was reportedly reached after the attorney general's office threatened charges of fraud and deceptive business practices when the companies ignored investigators' complaints.
Cuomo has made safety of children on the Internet a priority of his office. He subpoenaed Facebook in September 2007 after his office conducted an undercover investigation that he said yielded a slow response from the social network to complaints of harassment and inappropriate conduct. The subpoena eventually led to an agreement between Facebook and the attorneys general of 49 states.
Earlier in 2007, Cuomo joined a group of New York lawmakers in introducing a bill to crack down on the presence of sex offenders on the Internet, specifically on sites where they could get in touch with minors.
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